The Nigerian girl-child on my mind

Nigeria’s Rights of the Child prescribes that all children must have minimum of nine years of education.

What manner of meddlesome law makers do we have in this country? If they can continue to rip the nation’s resources apart, unperturbed , earning ludicrous emoluments not even the U. S President or the British Prime Minister earns, must they also continue to be a cog in the wheel of the anti corruption war? What is their own if EFCC is asking a house wife to explain the sources of her unearned wealth which runs into billions of naira? What right do they have to poke their noses into executive functions so annoyingly, they are asking banks to unfreeze accounts already countermanded by the anti graft agency? Aren’t they bothered about Nigerians perceiving them as apostles of corruption?

In order to protect the identity of the young subject of this article, the piece will be slightly edited, and the authorship shall not be ascribed. The piece is a reaction by a concerned, highly respected Nursing Professional, a former university teacher, now well into her 80’s and came as a reaction to a similar harrowing story of an 11 year old also in the North of our country.

That other story briefly.

In a letter she captioned: “The Painful Story of My Life”, the 11 year old wrote: “… I was married off at age 11. In my village, most of us were married by age 12 to preserve our purity. I am still not sure what that means. I never thought it would happen to me because my parents allowed me to attend school instead of hawking and I loved school a lot. I loved school because I loved coming first and being ahead of the boys in my class. I was in JS2 when my mother started talking about getting me married. I honestly thought she was joking until my uncle brought his friend to our house as my suitor.

My suitor, Malam Faruk was a shoe seller and cobbler in Zaria. He was 42 years old and my parents felt he would make a good husband. I neither understood what they were talking about nor did I understand what I would do with a husband. So that’s how Malam Faruk started coming to our house with wraps of suya and juice from the city. I liked the suya but I didn’t want a husband. He said he had 2 wives and he wanted to make me his third. He said his last daughter was in JS2 like me. He told me that when we got married I would stop going to school and bear him beautiful babies. I thought he was mad. I wanted to stay in school and become a nurse. I loved nurses in their immaculate white uniforms and how they had the solution to all problems at the health centre in my village.” She did not escape until she had had a boy who, according to her, could very well be an Almajiri today.

I digress.

Mama in her reaction writes:

“What do we do as a nation, a member of the civilised community? A country where children as young as six years are given out in marriage? Let me quickly share my experience of child marriage. I always like to have a child from my home town with me in Ibadan to send to school. The pre requisite qualifications are that such a kid must be brilliant and from a financially disadvantaged home.

This was how this pretty 14 year old girl was brought to me by my brother who told me the girl’s family was a returnee from Yola, victim of Boko Haram. Her mother is an Hausa woman from Taraba State. Her father died shortly after returning home.

Let us call the girl’s name Jolade for the purpose of this discussion.

This was in January 2017. We got a school for Jolade and was put in Primary 3!

After observing her behaviour for a couple of weeks, I started my investigation of her background even though she had, herself, told me a lot.

Below are my findings which are very pertinent to our on going discussion on child marriage.

Jolade’s parents separated while she was about five years old.

On the advice of some people, her mother who had custody gave her away in marriage to a man aged about 45 because she couldn’t cope with her upkeep.

The husband bought a goat for the child wife and the husband ‘s family instructed him not to have sex with his wife until the goat gave birth. He obeyed.

The day the goat gave birth, he had sex with the child who was then about six years old. Jolade told me she bled a lot, could not walk for days, and that she was always crying. No one cared for her. Her husband always threatened to beat her if she did not stop crying during intercourse.

The husband, his family and Jolade’s mother subsequently held a meeting and agreed that the husband should not have sex with her again until the goat’s babies grew horns. The man refused and continued to rape and sexually assault Jolade in spite of her pain, agonising crying and protests which was literally on a daily basis.

In the meantime, her farther was looking everywhere for her. The mother told him that she also did not know her where about. The father the went to her mother’s village in Taraba State to lodge a report with her grand mother with an ultimatum to produce his daughter. The grand mother finally rescued Jolade and brought her back to her father. Her ordeal lasted from shortly before Christmas of one year to after Easter of the second year. She said that her husband bought Christmas dresses for her two times. She was probably married for about 20 months, a period she described as hell”.

Mama continues:

Is there any law that can protect the girl child from predators who “marry” children as wives?

Yes, there is. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child describes a child as a human being under the age of 18 years. The African Union adopts the same definition and Nigeria is a signatory to both q laws. Nigeria, represented by President Babangida ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993 shortly before he stepped aside. I believe the bill for domestication of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was submitted to the National Assembly before he left.

There were, understandably, objections from those who marry kids as wives. A lot of political manoeuvre went on for many years before the bill was passed and sent to the 36 States. I am certain not all the 36 States have domesticated, or would domesticate it. States in Southern Nigeria have since done so.

What is the relevance of this to our discussion on child marriage?

Nigeria’s Rights of the Child prescribes that all children must have minimum of nine years of education. It also lists child marriage, making children to hawk, among other things as child abuse.

In essence child marriage violates the rights of the child by not allowing them to stay in school and subjecting them to marriage for which they are not physically, psychologically, and emotionally prepared. In many cases, the right of the girl child to life is violated when the kids die as a result of pregnancy, child birth and some other illnesses that arise from this unfair, and illegal, practice.

The practice of child marriage constitutes the SHAME of any nation which cannot keep to the spirit and letters of international protocols to protect her children; but which she ratified with all the fun fare. It is also an act of gross irresponsibility at the national level, that Nigeria cannot obey her own rules to keep the girl child safe from these predators.

There are other laws in Nigeria that stipulate the minimum education our kids should acquire and it is only fair that those who deliberately abort these by their predatory and very irresponsible libidonal predilections should be made to face the law.

And my question: which is the culprit here: culture, religion or plain ignorance?